Negotiating the Modern: Orientalism and Indianness in the Anglophone World

by Amit Ray

This book explicates long-standing literary celebrations of 'India' and 'Indian-ness' by charting a cultural history of Indianness in the Anglophone world, locating moments (in intellectual, religious and cultural history) where India and Indianness are offered up as solutions to modern moral, ethical and political questions in the 'West.' Beginning in the early 1800s, South Asians actively seek to occupy and modify spaces created by the scholarly discourses of the study of the East (‘Orient’) via Western (‘European’) epistemological frameworks. Tracing the varying fortunes of Orientalist scholars from the inception of British rule, this study charts the work of key Indologists in the colonial era. The rhetorical constructions of East and West deployed by both colonizer and colonized, as well as attempts to synthesize or transcend such constructions, became crucial to conceptions of the ‘modern.’ Eventually, Indian desire for political sovereignty together with the deeply racialized formations of imperialism produced a shift in the dialogic relationship between South Asia and Europe that had been initiated and sustained by orientalists. This impetus pushed scholarly discourse about India in Europe, North America and elsewhere, out of what had been a direct role in politics and theology and into high ‘Literary’ culture.

200 pages, Hardcover

First published January 22, 2007

About the author

Amit Ray is an enlightened spiritual master in the Himalayan Yoga and Vipassana tradition. His discoveries of the 114 chakras, quantum attention function, and compassionate artificial intelligence have made him famous. He began sharing his experiences after a series of transformative spiritual awakening. He is a man who attained complete realization of the Infinite. He is a man of compassion and love.
In his Himalayan Centre at Uttarkashi, he lives a life dedicated to meditation and yoga. He is author of several books on meditation, compassion, yoga, quantum computing, Artificial Intelligence and other topics.
Amit Ray, as a scientist, after doing his PhD in artificial intelligence and computational neuroscience, conducted many research in the areas of intelligence, quantum theory and the nature of consciousness. He worked in India, USA and UK for about 15 years. He has implemented many complex and large-scale AI projects across the world. With a spiritual bent of mind from his very childhood, he undertook intense practices in meditation from when he was a child. In his later years, many mystical experiences prompted him to dedicate his life for the search of truth. He taught that true freedom is possible for everyone of us.